Report: Administration Misled in Run-up to Lying

Washington – A Senate panel this week released a report which says the Bush administration misled Americans in the run-up to the lying to Americans that took place shortly thereafter. “There is ample proof that members of the administration misled the American public prior to its future lying to that same American public,” the report states. “Then, after the lying there was another round of misleading, but that is the subject of a separate report. There’s only so much untruth we can analyze at one time.”
At the White House, Press Secretary Dana Perino attempted to defend the administration in the face of the new allegations, claiming the members of the administration were victims of faulty intelligence. “Well, I honestly don’t see what we’re being accused of by this panel,” Perino said. “If anyone was misled here, it was us. As we’ve said many times, we didn’t know the intelligence was wrong when we relied on it. And we relied on it for many different things, including the campaign of misleading and deceiving the American people that was developed in preparation for the later lying we would partake in. And we believed the intelligence to be true, when we started bending it to be not true. But we were fooled. We were taken for a ride. Do we feel betrayed? Yes, I guess you could say we do. We’re certainly equally as betrayed as the American people, if not more. But you don’t see us crying all over the place.” Perino added, “And anyway, since the facts were so untrue when we got them, how does this panel not know that when we bent them, we actually bent them to be true? Huh? What about that? Has Jay Rockefeller thought about that one? I doubt it. I really doubt it. And I would hope he’ll give us the credit we deserve when that fact comes to light, that this administration brings truth to the American people, even when we mean to bring them pure, unadulterated lies.”

President Bush also blamed faulty intelligence for any wrongdoing on the part of himself or anyone else in his administration. “Look, I’m not a Houdini or a…a David Coppertone. I rely on the intelligence that these guys give me when I start a campaign of deception and propagandizing and embellishment,” Bush said when asked about the report. “But I can only distort what’s given to me. I can’t distort what doesn’t exist. That’s not something I can do. I can’t pull intelligence out of thin air to start a campaign to mislead Americans with. I need something solid to deviate from and embellish and spin into propaganda. Without that, I’m lost. The propaganda version of the set of facts is only as good as the set of facts it starts with. Garbage in, garbage out. There’s nothing I can do about the garbage coming in. I can only hope to get awful good garbage going out. And that’s what I’ve tried to do every day on this job.”

Presumptive Republican nominee for president John McCain also came to the administration’s defense. Speaking to reporters aboard his campaign bus, McCain said, “Hey, I hate war as much as anyone else. More, in fact. I really hate it. Like, really, really. But it exists. It’s there. And sometimes we have to bend the truth or the intelligence we have to get there, to serve the greater good. And in this case, that’s exactly what we needed to do, and I applaud the administration for doing it. We could not allow the North Korean regime to continue its invasion of South Korea. That just could not stand. We had to step in, and if that required some spinning of intelligence, then I say so be it. And I’ll say that to President Truman personally, when I see him.”